EU: European Commission puts unemployment reinsurance scheme on the table in a bid to support national partial-unemployment working schemes

Criticised for being slow to respond to the Coronavirus crisis, the European Commission has decided shift up gears. While the project has been under discussion for many years and was due to be the subject of a proposal at the end of 2020, the President of the European Commission announced on 1 April that the creation of a European unemployment reinsurance mechanism, called SURE was now imminent. The video announcement by Ursula von der Leyen, although scant on detail, was received positively by the European trade unions, which emphasized that ‘the last thing Europe needs in the midst of this health emergency is mass unemployment and another economic crisis.’ The legislative proposal will be presented in detail on 2 April and will then pass to the EU Finance ministers for adoption. A first round of discussions is now expected to occur at the Eurogroup meeting on 7 April. According to the Financial Times, the European Commission will ask member states to provide guarantees amounting to €25 billion so that it can borrow around €100 billion on the markets under this new facility.